underwater | An Bollenessor

The inhalant (left pic, 8 lobes) and exhalant (right pic, 6 lobes) siphon of the Sea Vase seasquirt (Ciona intestinalis). The pigments are thought to function as photoreceptors. This is a common species, especially in habitats disturbed by humans, and not too pretty (the latin name means ‘pillar of intestines’…) but if you zoom in everything reveals beautiful features! Quite moody shots, to which I have gravitated this year. I like the black backgrounds, which is achieved by letting very little light into the camera, with the strobes only lighting up the subject in the foreground – unable to illuminate anything in the open water (‘negative space’) behind. (A similar effect can be achieved using a ‘snoot’, but I have never managed to get that to work…) I have also tried to get closer and closer up with my macro wetlens, ideally I’d have some sort of microscope underwater! If you are on instagram, check out @an_bollenessor for more pics as ‘posts’ and as ‘stories’.

This Thursday was only sunny, but also not windy, with a good low tide in the early afternoon, which meant I reserved a few hours to go to Tunnel/Castle/Gylly beach for some snorkelling. The photo above shows Gylly Beach, with the start of Swanpool lagoon behind it and the Lizard in the far distance. (I took this with my iPhone using a Hipstamatic filter; for more iPhone pics of Cornwall see cornwall_hipsta on instagram…). The water temperature was OK (9C?) but the viz was not as good as I hoped. The seaweeds are at their peak now and the pools looked very pretty. Not many fish, but I saw a small brown thing floating around which I first thought was Sea hare, but turned out to be a small (perhaps a Connemara) clingfish lazing about until it noticed me and bolted into the seaweeds. I carefully snorkelled in about half a meter of water, admiring the views and trying to take photos close-up (as the viz was not too good) with my wide angle wetlens. Below an above-water shot of some iridescent Bushy rainbow wrack Cystoseira tamariscifolia and the invasive red Bonnemaisonia hamifera (on the left). I need to go back studying photography basics. A main challenge is contrast. The pools have beautiful white sand, which result in hugely overexposed photos (or completely darkened subjects). I have come up with my own law, the Photography Frustration Index (PFI): the beauty of the subject (B) x the difficulty of capturing it (D). The PFI is very high in the case of seaweeds! Next: Bushy rainbow wrack under Thong weed, Purple claw weed Cystoclonium purpureum, Bushy berry wrack Cystoseira nodulosum covered with the epiphytes Asparagopsis (left) and Bonnemaisonia (right), Hairy sand weed Cladostephus spongiosus, Black scour weed Ahnfeltia plicata (you can see they grow in the sand and must be used to scouring) a ‘bouquet’ of different species (with a snakelocks anemone) and a last photo of a variety of species, including the common False eyelash weed Calliblepharis jubata. The tides and weather conditions are unfavourable the coming days but I hope to go snorkeling again end of the week!